
You Don’t Reach Success Directly, These Quotes By Jordan Peterson And Adam Robinson Reveal The Way
These two game changing quotes by two game changing thinkers are great examples of how reaching the point of success is achieved indirectly as a by product of the quality of your practice .
As legendary psychiatrist Viktor Frankl said:
“Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”
I’ve been committed to distilling all that we do into simple principles that can impact others, and when I saw these top thinkers share quotes of the same underlying principle, I got inspired to write this piece and share.
In recent weeks, global macro investment advisor to the world’s largest hedge funds, Adam Robinson, and University of Toronto professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson provided two quotes that further scratched my never ending itch as I continue exploring what drives us to maximize our potential.
Here’s Robinson in a Facebook post:
LISTEN UP, revealing ULTIMATE SECRET TO SUCCESS
in EVERY area of life in 10 words!
THROW AWAY all how-to books — follow this precept,
I PROMISE the WORLD is yours:
“Take a sincere and passionate INTEREST in EVERYONE you encounter.”
Everything else follows.
It’s THAT simple.
When you’re interested in everything and everyone around you, you’re curious. The result becomes learning more about people, while creating the high quality connection you want. The connection that signals you care, because you’re a caring person, not because you want something.
That intention is felt — and the energy is abundant and attractive.
The result for you is that you’ve learned more about someone in the short term, but that persons world (and network) has now become your world in the long term.
Everything that person owns becomes accessible to you.
Any endeavor we want to succeed in ultimately requires the cooperation of other people, and this requires trust between them.
If you meditate on this principle as a habit to your daily life, over time you’ll achieve trust in everyone you need — to achieve everything you want.
So how much have you gained simply by being curious and taking a passionate interest in everyone around you?
Do it and it will compound to have a profound impact in your life.
Learn History For Yourself
I realized I’ve become obsessed with history lately, devouring Harari’s Sapiensseveral times — Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel and Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (a history book in it’s own right).
I fully follow my creative instinct every morning as I peruse through five to seven books for several hours letting my flow guide me.
I enjoy learning about any and every subject, however I noticed I’ve been drawn to history more and more every day.
My latest conclusion on the meaning of life is as follows:

History repeats itself and is thereby one of the best ways to build macro knowledge and learn to spot trends and where those trends sit in the broad adoption cycle of the masses.
In a Jordan Peterson lecture I was viewing on Youtube (apologies I didn’t bookmark the video as I was just now inspired to write the piece and remembered the quote!), he said:
“You should seek to learn history to learn about yourself”.
It had the same underlying emphasis of Robinson in that curiosity, a sincere and passionate interest in others from the past is the path to learn more about yourself.
It dawned on me that both of these principles are the indirect way to maximize our potential, and if considered daily, can serve as great guideposts.
For me, they’ve officially become ‘the way’ — as I make a case study the last ten years of my career to know that every great outcome was because of the people I was most interested in.
I then drew correlations to my rate of success as they’ve increased more and more I fell in love with reading books about subjects outside of my daily craft. There’s of course more to it as I’ve obviously gained other experiences over the last ten years.
However one of the most important things I’ve learned is that
Learning knowledge with the motivation to understand ourselves increases self awareness — the self awareness needed to understand that self actualization is not a destination, but a never ending journey of becoming.
You’re a human being, by that virtue alone you have unlimited potential. With the gift of imagination and complex goal setting.
Birds don’t need to ‘learn’ flying, they just fly 1000’s of miles because that’s their ‘success instinct’. Just like squirrels don’t need to learn storing away nuts for the winter, it’s just wired into them as their success instinct.
We’re the only mammal that can imagine complex plans, put them in motion for thousands of people to build spaceships and militaries with coordinated missions and beyond.
It’s simply up to you to take on larger and more complex goals. To succeed at those goals, all you need to do is practice those principles!
Conclusion
We take an interest in everyone around us because of the desire to understand, the wanting to learn, and the yearning to know — which leads to transcending our personal potential.
We read history for the desire to understand, the wanting to learn, and the yearning to know — which leads to transcending our potential.
Both quotes by these leading thinkers point to the trait of curiosity for it’s own sake.
Both quotes by these leading thinkers point to the love of learning because the more we know, the more successful we become.
Consider sticking these quotes to your computer or wall and meditate on them daily.
Embody them until they become a part of who you are and the world will beat a path to your door.
I’ve been hacking away efficiency and effectiveness for six years, and have produced a powerful list of 36 principles to become an elite performer. Click Here to get the list right now!
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